Establishment of new evaluation and accreditation system for graduate medical education in Iran

Graduate Medical Education is one of the stage of the continuum of medical education in Iran. At present, near 5500 residents are being trained in 24 specialties and 21 subspecialties in 26 Universities of Medical Sciences. Based on a special Act of National Parliament in 1973, the Iranian Council for Graduate Medical Education is responsible for supervision on the quality of Graduate Medical Education. Despite significant activities in this field during last three decades, there has been no integrated effort for evaluation and accreditation of specialty education units, yet. In this regard, the Secretary of the Council appointed a committee for preliminary studies and presentation of new approaches. In this article, the authors first describe the details of the activities of this committee. Thereafter, challenges of Graduate Medical Education and relevant supervisory bodies have been discussed. In the end, activities for the establishment of new accreditation system of Graduate Medical Education in Iran have been described